As Opposition Leader, he defiantly swore he would do no deals with minor parties but as Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott faces the prospect of an unwieldy Senate where the balance of power could be held by Clive Palmer, car enthusiasts and sports promoters.

With 39 votes needed to get legislation through the 76-seat Senate, the Abbott government will need to lock in six of eight eclectic votes to pass bills.

These votes include those of the Australian Sports Party, which received just 1908 votes, and the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, which received 11,232 votes. The AMEP wants greater rights for four-wheel-drive access as well as less state interference in the freedom of expression embodied in altering a personally owned vehicle.

Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party is expected to boast two senators: former footballer Glenn (known as “the brick with eyes") Lazarus and advocate for military veterans Jacquie Lambie.

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Family First is in the mix in South Australia, as is a senator from the Liberal Democratic Party in NSW. The LDP benefited from a huge “donkey" vote after being placed first on the massive ballot paper and being confused for the Liberal Party by thousands of voters.

The minor parties are generally seen to be on the right of politics but hold a range of views – or have not specified views – on controversial issues. But they will have every incentive to horse trade hard for their vote.

When voters dumped Labor on Saturday but opted in droves to give their votes to minor parties instead of the Coalition, they created a nightmare for the new government beyond July 2014.

A Senate result demonstrating that astute operators have worked out how to play the system has also transformed the politics of double dissolution threats, since the vote required to win a spot is halved in such elections.

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With counting continuing, the Coalition was expected to hold one less Senate seat , with 33 senators, while Labor’s numbers will drop from 31 to 25.

Motor Enthusiasts could fall out of count

There is a possibility the Motor Enthusiasts will fall out of the count in favour of current Liberal senator Helen Kroger, and the Sports Party will succumb to preferences flowing to Labor.

In NSW, Liberal senator Arthur ­Sinodinos, who is tipped to become a senior cabinet minister in the new government, has been forced to go to preferences against the onslaught of micro parties, which have done savvy preference deals with each other to boost their overall vote.

It is a model that copies a system followed in the NSW Upper House in 1999 which led to reforms to stop a repeat, reforms that were pushed by the now NSW Greens senator Lee Rhiannon.

Senator Rhiannon said she would seek talks with the Coalition and Labor about amending the Electoral Act to enable voters the option of “above the line" preferences in the Senate to “remove the incentive to harvest preference because there are no requirements to lodge preference tickets so there are no deals than can be done between ­parties".

As recently as Saturday morning, Mr Abbott was defiantly rejecting the idea of doing a deal with Mr Palmer to get laws through the Senate.

“I want to form a strong majority government in both houses of ­Parliament," he told Seven ­Network.

“If people want to get away from the squalid deals of the last three years, they have got to vote for the Coalition, for the Liberal or for the National Party candidate in both the House or the Senate, otherwise we could easily end up with another hung Parliament.

“We unfortunately had a situation where independents mucked up the last Parliament.

“Let’s not let independents and minor parties muck up the next ­Parliament."

The new Senate will give the Abbott government an even greater incentive to try to find a way of getting key reforms, including abolition of the ­carbon and mining tax through the ­existing Senate.

Greens leader Christine Milne said it was “quite ironic that Tony Abbott has spent three years absolutely ­negatively slamming the Labor Party for working with the crossbench in the House of Representatives and having to negotiate with the crossbench.

“Now Tony Abbott is going to have to negotiate with an extraordinary array of people whose policies nobody has got any idea about, and so it’s going to make for a very interesting Senate."